Girlfriend's new PC

[chrisafp07]

Hi guys, been with you awhile. After I built my rig I kinda retired for awhile and ahven't upgraded. WE want to build my girl a rig, baseline but ready to be expanded for gaming (add gpu later). I am thinking solid motherboard with an i5, she is a grad student, so mostly long papers and she plays league of legends and skyrim abit when we have downtime together. She'd like to play more intense games later once we feel adding a gpu makes sense.

What would you build for a base rig that would have a strong base and be ready to expand? I'll go SSD, she doesnt need tons of storage, and prolly only 8gb ram but not stuck on anything. Budget is between $400-maybe $700 max not including monitor and keyboard or mouse. Thoughts? I take opinions here seriously and have done my own research just wanted some ideas.

 

[Ironsounds]

Hello... You are right at the thresh hold of New tech... future holds DDR4 and new MB sockets and more PCIe lanes to the consumer MB's.
So socket 1150 1155, 3rd and 4th generation CPU's, DDR3 are the sale and stock clearing items right now.

So to say, there is a New base line in Hardware... the GPU Pcie/connection has not been changed yet.

 

[BadActor]

You can get all these parts cheaper by shopping around. Use the onboard video until you spring for a GPU.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($253.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.50 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 3 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($143.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($52.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($79.84 @ Amazon)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($47.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 520W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($53.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $667.29
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-14 20:04 EST-0500

 

[photonboy]

Hey,
The ABOVE is pretty close to what I'd recommend, though I prefer Asus boards.

i5-6600K iGPU for LOL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwIvyY4GYuo

Other:
1) Windows 10 64-bit.
2) The iGPU is pretty good for light gaming to hold you over (if you carefully tweak game settings):
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i5_6600k_processor_review_desktop_skylake,14.html

The iGPU is better than the i5-4670K GPU slightly and I managed to get a few games running fine on that.

For SKYRIM you'd want to not use the official HD texture pack, keep resolution to 1360x768, and avoid any texture mods (though SKYUI, unofficial patches etc are fine).

*LOL should run really well, but do tweak settings carefully whilst running FRAPS to ensure a solid frame rate.

Other:
When you add a different GPU it totally depends when you do it and budget of course, but if waiting several more months perhaps get an NVidia Pascal card. Otherwise revisit the question later.

 

[photonboy]

Update:
For the iGPU, make sure to use the maximum video memory (shares system memory) which is at least 1GB. Setting is done in the motherboard BIOS.

 

[chrisafp07]

Thanks alot, I really like the look of this build, seems so solid. Would looking for a chip of my year 4770k be worth it? Would I save money over DDR4?

You can get all these parts cheaper by shopping around. Use the onboard video until you spring for a GPU.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($253.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.50 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 3 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($143.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($52.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($79.84 @ Amazon)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($47.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 520W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($53.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $667.29
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-14 20:04 EST-0500

 

[BadActor]

I'm not sure, I guess it depends on what kind of deals you can get. I bundled the CPU and motherboard at Microcenter $219.99 and $134.99 for my Gaming 5 and then the RAM was $57.99. Z170 has a number of new features, plus longer upgrade path.

 

[photonboy]

Thanks alot, I really like the look of this build, seems so solid. Would looking for a chip of my year 4770k be worth it? Would I save money over DDR4?

You can get all these parts cheaper by shopping around. Use the onboard video until you spring for a GPU.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($253.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.50 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 3 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($143.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($52.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($79.84 @ Amazon)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($47.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 520W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($53.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $667.29
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-14 20:04 EST-0500

I didn't understand this question, however you can look at pcpartpicker to compare cost of motherboard + CPU + DDR3/4 as everything else will be the same.

Note that the iGPU in the i5-6600K is slightly better than the i5-4000 series by up to about a 33% faster frame rate depending on the game. Not a lot, but then you want every bit of performance you can get if using this to hold over until you get a dedicated GPU card.

There are smaller differences with the newer motherboards such as:
a) Intel CPU management (forget name). With Windows 10 it can actually boost performance in CPU limited situations by faster changing CPU frequency. It put responsiveness into the CPU hardware mainly to optimize for mobile power savings but it can help performance in some cases.

b) USB3.1

c) PCIe allocation (divides the PCIe bus in a better way though you likely don't care)

More info: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9485/intel-skylake-z170-motherboards-asrock-asus-gigabyte-msi-ecs-evga-supermicro

This is one of my favorite boards for the price though I'd personally buy the HERO board:
http://pcpartpicker.com/part/asus-motherboard-z170a

 

[Ironsounds]

Hello... the point being here that DDR3 8GB sticks is in abundance ( 16GB PC ) and prices will drop on ebay newegg etc.... But don't expect to use those sticks in a newer MB... the i7 i5 3000 and 4000 series CPU's are wonderful stable and fast... and prices will drop on ebay newegg etc... Is it wait and see project buy piece by piece? or Even used? will save $$$.

Here is a I7 3770 with no IGT... I got one for $200 shipped http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-E3-1240-v2-SR0P5-3-4-GHz-8MB-Quad-Core-LGA-1155-WITHOUT-FAN-/281847183727?hash=item419f66b96f:g:qFMAAOSwYHxWJ8LI

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E3-1240+V2+@+3.40GHz

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i5-6600K+%40+3.50GHz&id=2570

I just don't see a major CPU performance increase for the $$$ spent here... but I'm a builder and have Performance budgets.

 

[photonboy]

re XEON ABOVE:

IMO that's pretty poor advice...

For $230 you get a USED CPU that is about the exact same price as a new i5-4690K or i5-6600K.

Both of the above new CPU's are better for gaming at stock speeds (either better or the same depending on the game). The hyperthreading of the Xeon rarely helps so it's the single thread score that matters.

The i5-4690K is 2238.
The Xeon above is 1831.

If the HASSLE of buying used pieces, individually was well worth it maybe it would be worth considering but a moderate savings for a used product that performs WORSE in some games doesn't seem good advice to me.

Other:
The i5-6600K was also my recommendation because they mentioned WAITING a bit to buy a dedicated graphics card. It's got the best Intel iGPU you can buy AFAIK.

In fact, the XEON doesn't even have a GPU.

 

[chrisafp07]

You can get all these parts cheaper by shopping around. Use the onboard video until you spring for a GPU.

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6600K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($253.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG H7 49.0 CFM CPU Cooler ($34.50 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 3 ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($143.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory ($52.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($79.84 @ Amazon)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($47.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 520W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($53.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $667.29
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-11-14 20:04 EST-0500

Pretty much copied this build in the end, just went with a different 1151 mb, here, opinion on this board? I know its micro atx but she wont expand besides maybe a video card abit later.